Unified Brain Circuit in Addiction
” Our study found that various brain areas implicated in addiction are all a part of a common brain circuit,” said Michael Fox, MD, PhD, a matching author on the paper and founding director of the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics at Brigham and Womens Hospital. “Consistency across various documents suggests we now have a brain circuit to target addiction with treatments, instead of just a region.”
Fox teamed up with others in the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics as well as researchers from British Columbia, Boston Childrens Hospital, Wake Forest School of Medicine, and Philips Healthcare to finish the study. The very first author of the paper, Jacob Stubbs, PhD, is a medical trainee at the University of British Columbia. The research study started when Stubbs was a visiting scholar at Brigham and Womens Hospital under Fox.
The team looked at information from previous research studies involving more than 9,000 participants. Within each of those research studies, various brain regions were noted as a place to target to deal with dependency.
” The finest potential targets were uncertain because of the number of various abnormalities have been discovered across those previous research studies,” Stubbs said.
Network Mapping Approach to Identify Common Circuit
Scientists used a network mapping technique with a typical electrical wiring diagram to discover the link in between the various types of brain imaging lesions that affect addiction. It likewise looked at various compounds and found the network prevailed, whether somebody was addicted to nicotine, cocaine, alcohol, or heroin.
” Whats interesting is that due to the fact that theres a lot heterogeneity in the neuroimaging and substance use condition literature, we thought it was unlikely that we d discover a common circuit. However after much work and cooperation, we found something,” Stubbs stated. “Its interesting science.”
Challenges and Limitations in the Study
One constraint of the study is because the data originated from previous studies and the findings are correlative, the authors might not conclude causation. Stubbs likewise noted there are many ways to take a look at brain imaging, that makes looking at the information more complex.
Fox stated that despite the comprehensive information points, narrowing down a particular circuit fills out a gap from previous research studies done in the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics, bringing targeted neurostimulation to deal with dependency, like transcranial magnetic stimulation, closer to clients in a clinical setting..
” This study connects our previous work on lesions that stopped dependency to the last 50 years of research study on neuroimaging abnormalities in patients with addiction,” Fox said.
Joseph Taylor, MD, PhD, a psychiatrist and scientific director of transcranial magnetic stimulation at the CBCT, and a co-author of the paper, said that unification is a big step in the field of brain circuit therapies.
” This merging improves our self-confidence that we are beginning to understand the circuitry of compound usage conditions,” Taylor stated.
Referral: “Heterogeneous neuroimaging findings across substance usage disorders localize to a typical brain network” by Jacob L. Stubbs, Joseph J. Taylor, Shan H. Siddiqi, Frederic L. W. V. J. Schaper, Alexander L. Cohen, William Drew, Colleen A. Hanlon, Amir Abdolahi, Henry Z. Wang, William G. Honer, William J. Panenka and Michael D. Fox, 25 September 2023, Nature Mental Health.DOI: 10.1038/ s44220-023-00128-7.
SHS is a clinical expert for Magnus Medical, and a clinical specialist for Acacia Mental Health, Kaizen Brain Center, and Boston Precision Neurotherapeutics. SHS owns intellectual residential or commercial property including the use of functional connection to target TMS. MDF is a specialist for Magnus Medical, Solaris, and Boston Scientific and has intellectual home utilizing connectivity imaging to direct brain stimulation.
Financing: JLS was supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Vanier Scholarship and a University of British Columbia Friedman Award for Scholars in Health. JJT was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (K23MH129829), the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, Sidney R. Baer Foundation, the Baszucki Brain Research Fund, and Harvard Medical School. Data from the Rochester accomplice was supported in part by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Preventive Cardiology Training Grant # T32 HL007937 and by the Clinical and Translational Science Institute Grant # UL1 RR024160 from the National Institutes of Health.
The research study exposed that regardless of the compound or sore area, irregularities in compound usage conditions mapped to a shared brain network. Fox teamed up with others in the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics as well as scientists from British Columbia, Boston Childrens Hospital, Wake Forest School of Medicine, and Philips Healthcare to finish the study. SHS is a scientific expert for Magnus Medical, and a scientific consultant for Acacia Mental Health, Kaizen Brain Center, and Boston Precision Neurotherapeutics. MDF is an expert for Magnus Medical, Solaris, and Boston Scientific and has intellectual residential or commercial property utilizing connectivity imaging to assist brain stimulation. JJT was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (K23MH129829), the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, Sidney R. Baer Foundation, the Baszucki Brain Research Fund, and Harvard Medical School.
Researchers at Brigham and Womens Hospital have actually found a common brain network in substance use conditions by examining data from over 144 studies. This development, pointing to a combined target for neurostimulation therapies, marks a substantial advancement in addiction treatment research.
Scientists at Brigham analyzed data from 144 research studies encompassing various brain imaging strategies and compounds, revealing a typical brain network related to dependency.
Scientists at Brigham and Womens Hospital, part of the Mass General Brigham health care system, have conducted a research study suggesting the presence of a common brain network in individuals with substance use condition. This conclusion was drawn from an analysis of data from over 144 studies on dependency.
The research study revealed that no matter the substance or lesion area, irregularities in compound use conditions mapped to a shared brain network. This discovery opens up possibilities for targeting this particular brain circuit with neurostimulation therapies. The studys findings have been released in the journal Nature Mental Health.